Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how his Department is working with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to attract foreign direct investment into the Industrial Strategy.

The Department for International Trade (DIT) leads on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy.

DIT has been working closely with colleagues in the BEIS Industrial Strategy team, to ensure the closest possible alignment of activity to support the Strategy’s initiatives around growing clusters and sectors, and the promotion of FDI through DIT’s FDI strategy.

This will deliver a more targeted approach to promotion and investor support, and better address market failures to maximise wealth creation across the UK. From April 2018, we will change our measure of performance from the volume of projects landed to a comprehensive measure of economic impact.

Alongside this DIT will work with local partners to identify High Potential Opportunities that are currently overlooked, misunderstood, or underestimated, and therefore not achieving their full potential. Targeted promotion and support around these opportunities will help to address the market failures that leave these places at a disadvantage, by presenting investors with a more complete picture of supply.